travel never made a bore interesting; it only makes for a well-traveled bore, in the same way coffee makes for a wide-awake drunk. In fact, the more a bore travels, the worse he gets. The only advantage in it for his friends and family is that he isn't home as much.

This is your dividing line, by the way, between child and nonchild - when the first trouble happens that Mama can't fix.

Gifts of time and love are surely the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas.

I believe that one's basic financial attitudes are - like a tendency toward fat knees - probably formed in utero, or, at the very latest, in cribbo.

As millions of women have done before me, I pulled domesticity over my head like a blanket and found I was still cold.

It is important to remember that these are your Declining Years, in which you can jolly well decline to do what you don't feel like doing, unless not doing it would make you feel worse than doing it.

On their return from a trip, it is wise to see friends promptly, before they've had time to get their pictures developed.